


Little Marriage

by bravelikealady



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, House Stark, sansan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6268303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelikealady/pseuds/bravelikealady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Something smaller keeps us in tow<br/>With a difference between us and have & hold<br/>I started minding not having it all<br/>One little marriage or big love..."</p>
<p>Little Marriage by Lia Ices has always begged to be about Sansa and Sandor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Marriage

It had to be a small affair.

 

_ …And thank the gods for that. _

 

Winter Town was full of hungry mouths, tired and weak, and Sansa would not have them feel the way the smallfolk felt about Joffrey and Margaery’s flamboyant affair. She was a charitable and humble lady and he was proud of her. He wished he was good enough for that to be the only reason he was excited about a small affair, but truth be told he was glad he would not have to deal with the decorum and the crowd.

 

He was riding out to meet her, deep in the godswood, in front of a weirwood: the northern tradition. She had told him once, tracing the scars on his chest with her fingers, of how much she had loved the colors falling onto her lap when she knelt in the Sept and prayed to the Maiden, how warm she had felt, how comforted by the Seven looking down on her. “That was so long ago,” she’d said. “I am all red leaves and grey skies now… I remember falling asleep there sometimes… the weirwoods used to frighten me. They whisper, you see… but now… now they feel like…  _ mine _ .”

 

Sansa had gone ahead with Arya the morning before. The Wolf Sisters wanted to pray to the Old Gods to bless this union, and the newly erected Winterfell, and they planned to pray all night, as their father used to do. They had ridden off, Sansa’s general anxiety on horseback gone as she laughed with her little sister, her hair free, only a few simple braids, and he smiled as he watched her go.

 

The cold in his lungs was something he was accustomed to now, but he knew it was hers, and not his. As he smelled what was no doubt a campfire, he began to long for that warmth and a pang sprung in his nearly lame leg. It was nothing compared to the pain he felt when he first came to the North. The elder brother had told him not to go back to Westeros, told him he could repent some other way, that he did not have to do it through the Stark girl… but he had not listened. Face down in snow, sixteen moons ago now, he was sure he would die. The slush filled his throat and offered some sweet relief, some false hope of hydration, even as he couldn’t breathe. His body was numb, except for that dreadful wound in his thigh. He had screamed into the earth, in so much pain, begging for death, resigning himself to never giving the girl anything, an imagined “I told you, did I not” echoing in his head when he felt vibrations in the ground. _ Horses. Men _ . And finally men had turned him over. He felt a sword at his throat and then he heard her-

 

_ “I know him. I… He… Do not harm him” _

 

_ “He is gone, my lady. A mercy.” _

 

_ “No. No. He will live. He will live.” _

 

His horse jerked the reins, bringing Sandor back to the present moment. He saw what had alarmed the animal: Ghost. The direwolf had found the girls a few months ago… No one knew what became of their brother, Jon (though not their brother at all, but their cousin, if one believed the rumor of some Targaryen girl who had landed in the South,  _ dragons _ , they said, and visions that made her desperate for Jon). The direwolf had taken to Sandor, he could not say why, but it pleased him. 

“Hello, Ghost,” he said, giving the pup a nod. The red eyes seemed to say hello again. Turning a few times on the spot, the white wolf sped off, a blizzard of fur, and Sandor knew if he followed he would find his beloved, the red wolf who had saved him, and who would save the North.

 

He saw Arya first. She gave a nod that he returned and she walked up to him, grabbing his mount and giving it a pet before helping Sandor down. The youngest Stark girl was still slight, but had blossomed hips and breasts enough to betray her sex. She did not seem worried about it and neither did he… They never spoke of it, but he knew she had ways around that sort of thing, ways to disguise herself whenever and wherever she wanted.

 

“Valar Morghulis,” she said, the voice of a woman and not a child.

 

“Valar dohaeris,” he replied. “The little bird?”

 

“Just over there… there’s a bush behind the weirwood… sometimes our mother would make little crowns and bracelets from the holly there…” They looked in that direction and in their stillness all that could be heard was the wind and the soft melody of Sansa’s voice. “It’s hard for her.”

 

“I know,” he said, averting his eyes, as she averted hers. “Hard for you, too, pup.”

 

“I don’t matter,” Arya said, and Sandor was shocked to see she was almost crying. “You don’t matter. We’re-”

 

“I know.”

 

Arya tried to wipe away tears as if they were nothing. Sandor placed his large hand on her shoulder, only for a moment. “She saved us both. And I think sometimes… sometimes that is all that makes her happy.”

 

“She has nowhere else to go.”

 

“I worry about that, too.”

 

“She wants you. I don’t see why, but she does. You don’t deserve her.”

 

“I know.”

 

“If you ever… I… I really will kill you.”

 

“I’ll let you.”

 

He looked at Arya then, her eyes grey and deep, almond, not big and bright and round like her sister’s. She belonged here, in these woods, with Sansa, with ghost, with the Old Gods… He did not. Arya gave him another nod. Again, he returned it, and walked towards the weirwood where he would meet his bride.

 

He stood there, not letting her see him, listening to her sing. He was familiar with the song… something about six girls in a pool… He knew her mother used to sing it when she brushed Sansa’s hair. He was lost in the sound of her voice, lost in the cold wind, and the smell of the earth, and the fact that soon, soon he would be Lord to her Lady. Soon, he would have a wife, a home, and Arya, however begrudgingly… Soon, he would have a family. A lap of Ghost’s tongue against his glove brought him back.

 

“Should we get on with it?” he asked the direwolf, stooping to pet him, something he would regret when he tried to stand again. He scratched behind the beast’s ears and welcomed jaws that opened and then closed around his face, firm but loving (if the direwolf truly meant to eat his head, he would have it in a heartbeat). 

 

“Did you and Ghost have a prior betrothal?”

 

He looked up to find Sansa smiling at him, her hair down and free in wild, copper waves, the sunlight of midday placing an orange glow along the deeper tones of her hair. He reached out and pulled her closer. She held circlets of holly in her hands.

 

“What are those for?”

 

“My brothers,” she said. “It is a strange game… but Robb and I used to practice wedding… we made crowns of these…" 

 

She let out a small giggle. "Once, Theon pretended to be the weirwood and told us we really were married. I was so hurt and confused… It was just after my fifth name day… mayhaps the sixth? I thought the gods intended for me to betray them. I…” Her voice softened. “I made a crown for each… for Rickon and Bran and Jon… for… for Robb…”

 

With a half smile, she placed one of the crowns on his head and one on her own. She twisted the last two into a row of circlets over the fur lined fabric on her forearms. 

 

“You’re sad,” Sandor whispered, taking her hand and kissing it, resting his forehead on her palm.

  
“But I am happy, too,” she said, tears filling her blue eyes, leaning down so she was eye level with him. “By the old gods and the new…”


End file.
